All posts tagged: preach

Black clergy strategize, preach and urge election turnout after Voting Rights Act gutting

Black clergy strategize, preach and urge election turnout after Voting Rights Act gutting

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — On the first Sunday (May 3) after the Supreme Court decided to hollow out the Voting Rights Act, the Rev. Richelle Lewis-Castine offered some clear advice to her congregation in Patterson, Louisiana. “I encouraged them to early vote,” said the pastor of an African Methodist Episcopal Church. “I encouraged them to make sure that they get the information, that they’re reading carefully, and to encourage other people — especially those groups in their families who would not normally vote — to vote because it is so very important at this hour.” Rev. Richelle Lewis-Castine is the president of the 8th Episcopal District Women in Ministry and an ordained elder in the AME Church that has pastored many churches in the Central North Louisiana Conference. Photo courtesy PREACH Facebook Lewis-Castine is among a group of Black clergy taking proactive measures in the wake of the ruling, which is already reshaping election processes across the country — including prompting Louisiana legislators to meet on Friday (May 8) to debate redrawing their congressional maps after the …

Some churches don’t preach a literal resurrection. Here’s how they celebrate Easter.

Some churches don’t preach a literal resurrection. Here’s how they celebrate Easter.

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — “I don’t have a belief in any form of resurrection,” declared the Rev. Duncan Littlefair, then-pastor of Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to NBC’s Frank McGee on the “Today” show in April 1973. Wearing a white turtleneck and navy blazer, the pastor explained that he viewed the idea of Jesus’ physical resurrection as “absurd” and the notion of being saved only through Christ as a “totally provincial, Western view.” In the days that followed, both NBC and Fountain Street faced backlash as viewers caught wind of the pastor’s unconventional beliefs. But even in the 1970s, Fountain Street, a historic church founded in 1869 that had earned a reputation as a dogma-free activist outpost, wasn’t the only church where Jesus’ resurrection could be called into question. In 1961, the Unitarian Universalist Association had formed, a noncreedal tradition whose theological heritage saw Jesus as a moral exemplar, not God incarnate. These days, the landscape of noncreedal faith traditions has grown to encompass not just Unitarian Universalist congregations or historic, independent churches like Fountain …